Here are 100 books that CFI! the Book fans have personally recommended if you like
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I have been involved in aviation all my adult life as a pilot and a flight instructor. I am also an avid reader, and I like to read books written by my fellow aviators. I find books written by pilots exciting because of the similar experiences we all share in the industry. All the books that I recommend are very accessible for any reader without previous aviation knowledge; in fact, I think you will find these books even more fascinating as they will open your eyes to the wonderful world of aviation!
Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger is one of the most well-known aviators in recent history. He was made famous by an extremely dangerous situation that he handled exceptionally well. This book is not just about the “Miracle on Hudson” incident; this is a biography about Captain Sully, how he became a pilot, and how decades of flying prepared him for this one single moment. It’s an inspirational book for anyone to read.
On January 15, 2009, the world witnessed one of the most remarkable emergency landings in aviation history when Captain Chesley Sully Sullenberger skillfully glided US Airways Flight 1549 onto the surface of the Hudson River, saving the lives of all 155 aboard. His cool actions not only averted tragedy but made him a hero and an inspiration worldwide. To Sullenberger, a calm, steady pilot with forty years of flying experience who is also a safety consulting expert, the landing was not a miracle but rather the result of years of practice and training-wisdom he gained in the cockpit of U.S.…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I have been involved in aviation all my adult life as a pilot and a flight instructor. I am also an avid reader, and I like to read books written by my fellow aviators. I find books written by pilots exciting because of the similar experiences we all share in the industry. All the books that I recommend are very accessible for any reader without previous aviation knowledge; in fact, I think you will find these books even more fascinating as they will open your eyes to the wonderful world of aviation!
Most people associate pilot jobs with working for airlines and wearing a uniform. Many people think about flying as similar to driving busses while, in fact, it’s far from it. Working as a ferry pilot can be one of the most exciting jobs on the planet! Ferry pilots get to fly countless different types of airplanes worldwide and face adventures like no one else. This book may not introduce you to the best decision-making by pilots, but it indeed introduces you to a different type of flying.
What could possibly go wrong? A LOT, if you spend 30 years flying small airplanes over the North Atlantic!
Join Kerry McCauley in the cockpit as he battles a fuel system malfunction over the Atlantic, a total electrical failure at night over the Sahara, being struck by lightning off the coast of Portugal and losing his engine in a thunderstorm. As an international ferry pilot Kerry’s almost insatiable, reckless quest for danger and adventure also led Kerry to put international smuggler and bank robber on his resume. Kerry’s skill, ingenuity and a heavy dose of luck were what allowed him…
I have been involved in aviation all my adult life as a pilot and a flight instructor. I am also an avid reader, and I like to read books written by my fellow aviators. I find books written by pilots exciting because of the similar experiences we all share in the industry. All the books that I recommend are very accessible for any reader without previous aviation knowledge; in fact, I think you will find these books even more fascinating as they will open your eyes to the wonderful world of aviation!
The Learjet Diaries is a book that I can relate to very well, and I could see myself writing a similar book. While I have never flown Learjets, I fly corporate airplanes built by the same manufacturer, and I have had similar experiences flying jets around the world. The author describes the transition from flying small piston planes to flying fast jet aircraft very nicely. Anyone interested in flying and private jets is sure to enjoy this exciting story of a coming of age.
The Learjet Diaries is a fictional pilot memoir of young ambitious pilot who starts his career as a Learjet charter pilot flying around the Caribbean and South America in the early 1980s. It is a well-written and compelling aviation adventure with each paragraph sizzling with tension and authenticity. The author places you right in the cockpit as he learns the strengths and sensitivities of one of the world’s most demanding business jets. As a reader you feel the control stick in your hand of one of the world’s fastest business jets as you experience the chilling adventures of a Learjet…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
I have been involved in aviation all my adult life as a pilot and a flight instructor. I am also an avid reader, and I like to read books written by my fellow aviators. I find books written by pilots exciting because of the similar experiences we all share in the industry. All the books that I recommend are very accessible for any reader without previous aviation knowledge; in fact, I think you will find these books even more fascinating as they will open your eyes to the wonderful world of aviation!
I have been to Alaska many times as Anchorage is one of the main fuel stops flying from Asia to the United States. It’s always fascinating to see so many small airplanes filling the skies there. It’s also fascinating to see so many planes on floats; those are the planes that can land in the lakes and rivers in remote areas. So I found this collection of stories an exciting introduction to bush flying in the Alaskan wilderness.
Flying in the Alaskan wilderness is an entirely different skill set than the way most pilots are trained; flying to and from remote gravel bars on wheels, streams and lakes on floats, and ski operations in deep snow and horrific weather. Many times I thought I would not make it, flying overloaded airplanes with the doors removed, external loads strapped to the floats, no navigational aids and totally alone in a vast wilderness with only my skills and determination to get me home.
After logging 4,000 flight hours, and flying sometimes 16 hours a day, I actually became as one…
My passions lean toward American history, Americana, and skepticism. My creed is that "Conventional wisdom is neither." I am a member of the Skeptics Society, and I often litigate and lecture on copyright and celebrity rights issues. I have been a trial lawyer for 45 years and try cases in front of flesh and blood judges and juries. My clientele runs from supermodels to celebrities, photographers, performers, directors, model agencies, photographers, and artists.
This book teaches us that hypocrisy is no impediment for a great salesman. Dreams sell in America and sell better when the salesman is charismatic, integrity be damned.
I love the book because it teaches us how persuadable folks are, whether they are being sold on religion or vacuum cleaners. As the Doobie Bros put it so well: "But what a fool believes he sees, No wise man has the power to reason away. What seems to be is always better than nothing."
Universally recognized as a landmark in American literature, Elmer Gantry scandalized the generation in which it was written, causing Sinclair Lewis to be "invited" to a jail cell in New Hampshire and to his own lynching in Virginia. His portrait of an evangelist who rises to power within his church - a saver of souls who lives a life of hypocrisy, sensuality, and ruthless self-indulgence - has been called the greatest, most vital, and most penetrating study of hypocrisy that has been written since Voltaire.
I consider myself not only a student of satire, but also as a master practitioner with an innate and instinctive aptitude for it—like those born with perfect pitch or hand-eye coordination, kind of like an idiot savant, only hopefully without the idiot part. Satire is the perfect literary platform because it allows both the writer and the reader to explore the landscape of the human experience, the absurdity, the grandeur, the mystery, the horror—not with a sermon or a polemic or a sigh, but with a laugh and a nodding smile of recognition.
Once again, I’d never read anything like it before. He was having a conversation with me. I was now a character in an Amsterdam bar with him, the war had just ended, we were smoking cigarettes and drinking gin.
He would respond to my silent questions, and wax and wane philosophically, metaphysically, morally, ethically, and occasionally comically.
And the beauty was that it had happened so randomly—a roommate had thrown the book in the trash, declaring it to be “bullshit.” I knew the lad to be an imbecile (an acceptable term at the time), so I fished the book out of the trash, read the first sentence, and loved it.
It was the quantumly entangled counter particle to Candide: one particle from the age of reason, the other particle from the age of existentialism.
Introducing Little Clothbound Classics: irresistible, mini editions of short stories, novellas and essays from the world's greatest writers, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith
Celebrating the range and diversity of Penguin Classics, they take us from snowy Japan to springtime Vienna, from haunted New England to a sun-drenched Mediterranean island, and from a game of chess on the ocean to a love story on the moon. Beautifully designed and printed, these collectible editions are bound in colourful, tactile cloth and stamped with foil.
Jean-Baptiste Clamence - refined, handsome, forty, a former successful lawyer - is in turmoil. Over several drunken…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
When I was a small child I used to stare long and hard at playing cards, absorbed in the mediaeval-ish drawings and with the feeling that they were trying to tell me something beyond the obvious; which was that they simply represented numbers and suits for the purpose of playing Whist or Rummy or whatever. Gradually I learned that the instinct was true, that ordinary playing cards have long been used for fortune-telling and are related of course to Tarot cards, which take the divination angle to a whole other level (and conversely can equally, if rather frivolously, be used for playing Poker if you leave out the Major Arcana cards).
Does Terry Pratchett seem a frivolous choice compared to my others? Not at all. There is deep and humane wisdom hidden in his Discworld humor.
In the eternally recurrent conflict between Dwarves and Trolls in the Discworld, the board game Thud (a parallel world echo of the Scandinavian hnefatafl games) plays a pivotal and, ultimately, crucial role.
The story's hero is Samuel Vimes, a favorite avatar of Pratchett's. Vimes is a recovering alcoholic, depressive policeman who through chance and a stubborn inborn streak of decency and sense of fair play, happens to end up as the Duke of Ankh Morpork (the Discworld equivalent of London) and mediator between the two warring tribes. It's his job to find the point at which they can at least agree to not slaughter each other.
Once, in a gods-forsaken hellhole called Koom Valley, trolls and dwarfs met in bloody combat. Centuries later, each species still views the other with simmering animosity. Lately, the influential dwarf, Grag Hamcrusher, has been fomenting unrest among Ankh-Morpork's more diminutive citizens—a volatile situation made far worse when the pint-size provocateur is discovered bashed to death . . . with a troll club lying conveniently nearby.
Commander Sam Vimes of the City Watch is aware of the importance of solving the Hamcrusher homicide without delay. (Vimes's second most-pressing responsibility, in fact, next to always being home at six p.m. sharp to…
As a writer, artist, and actor throughout my life, I’ve explored and enjoyed many artistic forms. While I appreciate books across many genres, I elevate to the highest level those works that manage to break conventional boundaries and create something original. In my own work, I have always challenged myself to create something unique with a medium that has never been done before. At the same time, I have sought to discover a process and resulting work that inspires readers’ own creativity and challenges them to expand their imagination.
First published in 1959, Naked Lunch was shocking then, and it still retains its power today. Both in content and structure, Naked Lunch is powerful and wholly original. In effect, it becomes more than a work of fiction, it becomes an experience. Burroughs invented a technique called the “cut-up method,” where he cut up his coherent storyline into paragraphs, scenes, and even sentences, then reordered them both randomly and editorially. The disorder thematically represents the chaos of existence and the universe, and it also disrupts the reader. Like the book or not, it shakes you into realizing that there are possibilities beyond the conventional.
Burrough’s language is honed to a razor’s edge, and I find that many of the sentences in Naked Lunch burn like fire. The meaning of the title as Burroughs explains it is to bare the naked truth of reality on the end of a fork. From…
Since its original publication in Paris in 1959, Naked Lunch has become one of the most important novels of the twentieth century.
Exerting its influence on the relationship of art and obscenity, it is one of the books that redefined not just literature but American culture. For the Burroughs enthusiast and the neophyte, this volume—that contains final-draft typescripts, numerous unpublished contemporaneous writings by Burroughs, his own later introductions to the book, and his essay on psychoactive drugs—is a valuable and fresh experience of a novel that has lost none of its relevance or satirical bite.
I am a retired psychotherapist and teacher, but if someone asked me what the purpose of life is, I’d say, “to become aware.” Awareness is the capacity to see without prejudice, bias, or conditioning. I don’t like being in the dark, and so I have been on a lifelong journey to become aware. I have stepped into seeing several times in my life, so now my task is to teach others. It’s who I am—my essence is to continue teaching, to set people free from societal conditioning and their upbringings. Growing up means losing certain comforting illusions, but greater understanding fills their place.
I liked the concept of man being small and adrift in the darkness of the wide world. This book taught me to see through politics, grandstanding, and the grandiose nonsense of man. Swift is my kind of guy, brutally satirical and profound. This book is really not for children. We see Gulliver travel on many adventures and experience Swift's disappointment as he engages different cultures, small and large, rational and irrational.
His adventures demolish Gulliver’s sense of humanity to the point that when he is about to be rescued, at first, he rejects the offer like a misanthrope before finally climbing aboard. Swift is very dark here. Why would anyone want to return to the same old life after having their eyes opened?
'Thus, gentle Reader, I have given thee a faithful History of my Travels for Sixteen Years, and above Seven Months; wherein I have not been so studious of Ornament as of Truth.'
In these words Gulliver represents himself as a reliable reporter of the fantastic adventures he has just set down; but how far can we rely on a narrator whose identity is elusive and whoses inventiveness is self-evident? Gulliver's Travels purports to be a travel book, and describes Gulliver's encounters with the inhabitants of four extraordinary places: Lilliput, Brobdingnag, Laputa, and the country of the Houyhnhnms. A consummately skilful…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
Through the 88 years of my life, I have experienced more diverse situations than most people even dream about, from being the youngest dentist in Canada at age 21 being the first Canadian to invent, patent, obtain international approval, and market several of the most successful dental implant systems in the world for humans and small animals, attempt to sail around the world, be the oldest rugby player in the world at age 85, and meet and befriend a myriad of weird and wonderful people by practicing the mantra of saying "YES." I am not ashamed to pass on my lessons from these experiences.
I can totally relate to his non-conformist views on subjects that too many unthinking flocks of people religiously believe in. I absolutely love the way he fearlessly challenges societal norms and his generally humorous discussion of taboo subjects.
Discover the untold stories, the triumphs, and the unfiltered truth behind the laughter. Dive into the extraordinary journey of one of comedy's most influential icons, Ricky Gervais.
From his groundbreaking work on "The Office" to his fearless hosting gigs, this captivating book takes you behind the scenes, revealing the man behind the comedy. Get ready to laugh, reflect, and be inspired by the wit, satire, and unapologetic honesty of Ricky Gervais.
"THE EXTRAORDINARY LIFE AND COMEDY OF RICKY GERVAIS" is a must-read for fans and newcomers alike. Embark on this inspiring and thought-provoking journey today!
